


A Little More Conversation

by Lackyducks



Series: Polyship Prompt Week [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Confrontations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, Multi, get it together guys oh my gosh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7859407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lackyducks/pseuds/Lackyducks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joel is flirty, just, only with seven specific people. His coworkers. Who just entered a relationship without him. And who can't work out why Joel is upset. </p><p>There's probably far better ways they could have done this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little More Conversation

**Author's Note:**

> Ayyyy it's angst day!!!  
> Prompt: http://polyshipprompts.tumblr.com/post/133129701949/imagine-person-a-is-really-flirtatious-towards

Okay, let's get one thing straight. Joel isn't. No, that was not the point supposed to be made here. Even if it's still something that Joel will happily remind people about. 

Right. The point was supposed to be that Joel is in fact - contrary to the popular belief of his coworkers -  _ not _ flirty by nature. Sure, he plays up his looks and his appearance but with hips and hair like his, who can blame him? But no, the flirting remains firmly as something Joel only does with his coworkers. With the seven  _ wonderful  _ people that Joel loves very much. The seven wonderful coworkers who only take Joel’s affection as a joke, as something he puts on for the camera, as part of his nature and Joel doesn't know  _ what to do. _ He's never learnt any other tactics, doesn't know any other method, so he just keeps doing it, keeps getting his heart crushed.

They're all already  _ in  _ a relationship. He doesn't know when it's happened but there's something happening and it disheartens Joel in a way that being taken as a joke doesn't. Despite his flirting, his  _ blatantly obvious  _ flirting, they got together without him. Without Joel. That must mean something, right? They must, they  _ must _ hate him. And here he is, still fucking trying like an oblivious idiot! He's, he's not sure why he bothers.

It's surprisingly easy to notice the next morning that something's wrong with Joel. Lawrence notices it first, notices how he's pulled the stool up already, slumping very slightly on the desk as he works. Lawrence still doesn't comment on it though. Not to Joel. However the others do. Small gestures, pointing, and they're worried because something is clearly up. Lawrence has no idea how Joel doesn't notice.

They come to a decision through their emails that Bruce should talk to him. He's their boss, he can pull the ‘work standpoint’ card better than they can. And Bruce is a lot less afraid of offending him, unlike Sean who shies away the moment there's a sign of conflict. 

“Hey, Joel?” Bruce says, he's already standing next to his desk but Joel hadn't spotted him. Hell, all he does is take one headphone off and hum his acknowledgement. “Want to head out for lunch with me?” Joel turns to him then, looks slightly surprised. But he examines Bruce’s face - sees something that apparently makes him shut down once more. 

“I- no. I'm fine. Thanks.” Joel goes to put the headphone back on and Bruce stops him, physically holding his wrist to keep it away from it. 

“Okay, right, we need to talk? Like, right now?” Bruce tells him, the only warning before he's physically taking Joel’s arm and pulling him out of the room. He sits him down in their small kitchen/storage space, stands, and stares Joel down. Joel tilts his head, raises an eyebrow calmly. 

“You said we needed to talk, you aren't doing much talking.” Joel finally breaks their silence. His face is cold, closed off and stony. 

“What's wrong?” Bruce asks, deciding to be outright about it. Joel scoffs.

“It's not something you need to be concerned with.” Joel shrugs him off. Bruce fixes him with a look.

“Joel, as your boss and most importantly, your _friend_ - I'm fucking worried about you.” Bruce tries to reason with him. Joel flinches back. Whatever it is he’s reacting to, Bruce can’t work it out.

“And as your  _ friend,  _ I believe it’s best for both of us if you drop it.” With that Joel stands up, and Bruce barely hesitates before grabbing his arm and holding him in place. Joel turns, glares straight at him and his eyes hold no remorse.

“Joel, please.” Bruce pleads now, and Joel still doesn’t react, doesn’t seem to understand Bruce’s desperation. If he picks up on how Bruce has stooped so low as to beg, he gives no indication. He shakes off Bruce’s grip, rolls his eyes.

“Oh, you’ll be fine.” He tells him, before storming back to the main office. Bruce watches him go, because  _ shit _ , what do you do after that? He’s not sure if he’s stood there longer than he thinks, or if Adam was waiting outside, because then he’s there. He stands next to Bruce, looks in the direction Joel just left and sighs.

“Went badly?” He asks, as if he needs to. Bruce nods. “I guess we just have to hope it’s something he works through himself, huh?” Bruce nods again.

It turns out, as fate would have it. That it is not something Joel seems to be working through himself. He gets more withdrawn, even on camera. On one of the slightly better days, Bruce complimented him on one of the jokes he managed to pull off and he’d just shrugged. He stayed stuck to the background, Lawrence had to cut out one of the occasions they’d tried to call for him to get no reaction. Sean had got the same results when he tried to approach him, Elyse too. They were all at a complete loss as to what they should be doing to help. The worst thing is that they can’t even think of something that could have triggered it. They just try their best to make him feel included, inviting him out (turned down), offering praise (dismissed) and just, trying to make it clear they haven’t just  _ forgotten _ him. That they’re here for him.

He sits out of that week’s Openhaus, and they’re all left wondering how they can brush it off, they already know the comments are going to pick it up. James manages to brush Joel’s absence off with a joke and hopefully that’ll hold them off a bit. They won’t know until they get the video posted. That doesn’t stop them worrying about Joel though. Their nervous looks can’t have gone unnoticed. 

James brings it up when they’re all hanging out at the Willemses apartment. They’re lounging around in the too small sitting room, trying to focus on a game but none of them seem properly into it. Everything is enriched with the potent worry, the knowledge that something is  _ wrong.  _

“We need to hold an intervention.” He says, no hesitance in his words, “And soon.”

“For who?” Sean asks, not quite following.

“Joel. The idiot’s going to mope forever if he carries on like this and it definitely is past the point of fixing itself.” James throws his hands up in frustration.

“What caused it? It has to be something we did, right?” Elyse asks, she’s been losing sleep over this. It’s evident in how her makeup has come off during the day, revealing the bags she was trying to hide. She looks exhausted. Bruce sighs, rubs his hands over his face and leans back on the sofa.

“I’ve not seen Joel get in a funk like this before.” He admits, and they all silence as they try to take that new bit of information in. A couple of them look down at the floor, a small pause only interrupted by sighs and the game’s music.

“Does he know about our relationship?” Matt suggests. They chose not to tell him yet, simply because they had yet to ask him to be in it. It was inconvenient, around the time he started to distance himself was when they officially got together. It’s hard to ask someone out when he refuses to even go to lunch with you. They didn’t want to tell him in case he felt like they were purposefully leaving him out. They wouldn’t do that to him. It’s just, difficult. 

“We haven’t been as discreet as we should have.” Lawrence throws a pointed look at Elyse and James, and they throw innocent smiles back.

“It’s no different from our usual behaviour though, we do the whole cutesy teasing stuff. Play it up for the camera, you know.” James points out for them. Matt nods his agreement, the one of them who finds it easiest to see the separation between on and off camera personas. 

“Joel’s usual behaviour is flirty. He’s dropped that.” Lawrence adds again. Bruce hums, shutting his eyes and it’s as if something clicks in his head.

“How many times have you guys seen him be flirty to other people?” Bruce throws the question out to all of them. There’s a moment of silence once again and it seems tonight really is ‘new stuff to consider about Joel’ night.

“He’s been flirty with you guys lots.” James says.

“He’s flirty  _ off camera  _ too.” Sean speaks up, raising his hand slightly.

“But has he been flirty with people that aren’t in this room?” Bruce elaborates and there’s another pause as they all come up blank. They all share looks as if they’re trying to work out who should say the obvious conclusion here.

“Has Joel been flirting with us?” Adam eventually asks. Bruce clicks his tongue.

“I think he has.” He nods. 

“Well,” Lawrence mutters, “fuck.”

They manage to corner Joel the next day. The seven of them come in early, with Bruce, so they’re already waiting at the office by the time Joel even shows up. He walks in and James shuts the door right behind him, leaning on it with a smug smirk. Joel blinks at him, immediately understanding that something is happening - just not  _ what.  _ The others all look up at the sound of the door shutting, and Joel turns back and almost jumps when he sees all the eyes watching him. 

“Is this a fucking intervention?” Is the first thing out of Joel’s mouth. Lawrence chuckles, and Elyse reaches over to hit him.

“Yep.” Bruce nods at Joel, “It’s a ‘something is wrong and we want to help fix it’ intervention.”

“Also a ‘we want to ask you out’ intervention.” James pipes up. 

Adam glares daggers at him, hissing, “We weren’t meant to say that yet.”

“Look, it’s the only way we’re going to get his stubborn ass to talk so yeah, hi Joel we want to fucking date you and have been trying to ask you out for fucking weeks.” Joel stands completely frozen still, looking at James where he’s leaning on the door behind him. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Joel’s voice holds an edge to it, ready to spiral. This is the moment, anything could tip this and oh, that’s terrifying.

“No. We’ve wanted to date you since we got together but you’ve turned down every invitation to lunch, shut down every conversation. We didn’t have any options, Joel.” Bruce tells him seriously and there it is, there’s the tip. Joel’s hands clench, he swallows hard, blinks hard.

“ _You_ didn’t have any options?!” He shouts, waves his hand out in some show of power, of distress. “I, you think of me as a fucking joke, like, I’m not taken seriously - none of you took me seriously and then you all, get together suddenly, out of nowhere, and I’ve been flirting with you for over five years and I wasn’t even- It’s always, ‘that’s just how he _is,_ Joel just, acts like that’! What was I supposed to do?! I thought you _hated me!_ ” And then the fight just leaves Joel, he sags helplessly, bringing his hand up to wipe away the tears he didn’t have the energy to stop. His shoulders are slumped, and he looks tiny compared to the room around him.

James steps forward, the closest one to Joel, and carefully makes eye contact, gently nudges his hand out of the way. The blue meets hazel, brimmed with tears and ringed with red. James takes a breath, puffs it out and never breaks eye contact.

“We fucked up.” He says, just like that. Joel blinks at him.

“Yeah.” 

“We want to fix it.” James then tells him. Joel pauses slightly in his answer.

“I’d like that.” He nods, keeps eye contact still. 

“Can I hug you now because you look like you need one.” James asks. There’s no hesitation this time.

“Yeah, I’d like that too.” And James pulls Joel right into his arms, tucked as close to his chest as possible. Joel reaches around him, hands gripping the fabric of James’ shirt as he cries out the last tears he has in him. It’s a cue for the others too, each of them adding on to the hug until Joel is almost hidden in the middle of the circle. He looks up, around him, at everyone and chokes out another sob because they don’t hate him- they  _ don’t. _

“Joel we are so sorry.” Bruce whispers. There’s a hum of agreement from everybody else too. “We really didn’t realise and we shouldn’t have started this relationship without you in it. We wanted you in it from the start, just you weren’t there and I’m really fucking sorry. We all are.” Joel hits Bruce the best he can (Bruce took the position next to Joel, after all.)

“Next time just fucking text me, you asses.” Then Joel laughs.

  
(“You are going to keep flirting with us, though?” James asks, as the hug breaks apart. Joel hits him harder.)


End file.
